Sous rature

 Derrida put certain words under erasure

Questioning their ability to refer to things

In an easy way; we understand his schtick. 

We already knew this, in a way, and if we didn’t

We could have learned it from William Bronk too. 

It must be abstract

 The language of humanities bureaucrats is abstract. There is never to be any mention of actual works of art, literature, or philosophy. What takes center stage is the cliché: what it means to live "the good life," for example. Humanities help us to find the meaning of life. Yay!  Humanities skills, as defined in this sort of think piece, are likewise vague, such that they are no longer specifically humanistic. You would want every scientist and social scientist to master "critical thinking," for example. It is arrogant to claim that only humanists know how to think correctly. In my experience, some people in the humanities cannot actually think very well at all. 

So I don't really like the concept of the "humanities" or "the arts" at all. Once you lump these things together the actual content of them seems to dissipate. I love "art" but "the arts" is a term of abstract bureaucracy. 

The Triumph of Vagueness

Calls for the renewal of the humanities, such as the one referenced in the previous post, first have to paint the situation as dire. The humanities are in a bad shape.

The answer is always something interdisciplinary.  Individual fields are never interesting (English lit, philosophy, art history), only things that cross those boundaries. But why? My own research is interdisciplinary, and that is a good thing (I think), but I have zero interest in the vague promises that these approaches are supposedly offering. I am always interested in highly specific things (what the article cited calls the "esoteric."). The larger value of these works of art, music, or philosophy has to do with the intrinsic interest of the material, not its vague contribution to understanding "what it means to be human." I imagine in a course about what it means to be human nothing would actually be learned, because the entire premise is wrong. 

We should be orienting everything toward "democracy," or "the human condition." The value is always a pragmatic one (allegedly) of addressing The Problems Afflicting Modern Humanity In These Difficult Times.  But we never see what this actually looks like in real life. The pragmatic lesson always boils down to another vagueness, like "critical thinking" or "compassion."  

Now, I'm not knocking the value of democracy, citizenship, thinking, etc...  I just don't like that self  congratulatory tone of the whole thing. I don't think my being a compassionate person, to the extent I am, has anything to do with my profession as a literary critic or "humanist." Many of us poets and critics are plenty narcissistic, for example. You can also be a formidable intellectual in any field of inquiry, whether it is "humanities" or not. 

To propose a pragmatic approach to the humanities through an abandonment of the humanities themselves, that surely can't be the road forward.  

***

I think my interest in Bronk is that he is always calling bullshit on these things. Intellectual systems for understanding reality are just arbitrary categories we hold on to for dear life, he seems to be saying. I guess he is a philosophical poet writing about the human condition, but the human condition is that we don't know shit.  

The future

The future of the humanities is .... no humanities.  

Moderate to severe

 On pharma commercials actors talk

Off their"'moderate to severe" symptoms

Of various diseases.  

But surely moderate and severe are opposites?  

ASTROLOGERS

 The astrologers have

"We believe in science"

Signs, in their front yards.  

"The Jungle"

 One thing young Mayhew did was to go the rare book room and look at the original periodical publication of a William Carlos Williams poem, and use the earlier version as a point of comparison with the poem as it appears in Collected Early Poems. I don't know how I knew to do this, or how I found the poem, etc... There was no internet 40 years ago. If you put me back in 1981 I wouldn't know how to find this poem in The Dial.  

The version I found of my paper must not be the one I turned in, because I remember making other points that are not in this one, and there are some handwritten corrections. I still think my points are valid ones, but of course I would do it a bit differently now. My analysis gets too thick at times. Overall, I think I make some points very effectively, but I don't draw out the larger implications very well. You might say "so what."  

I begin by saying that Williams's poetry is difficult for critics to write about because it is easy to understand. There is nothing for the critic to do. Unlike, say, Stevens, Pound, Eliot. So I show there is something interesting to do to this poem.